Once again, President Obama has been caught either telling a lie or not having his facts straight. This time, it was his sales pitch of health care reform to the combined houses of Congress and an American TV audience in the millions on September 9th. This has been mentioned by both Glenn Beck (Barack Makin’ It Up!) as well as Michelle Malkin. However there’s more to this than meets the eye. First, a refresher if you’re just catching up to this latest swim in Barack-ish waters:

President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about.

“They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it,” the president said in the nationally televised address.

In fact, the man, Otto S. Raddatz, didn’t die because the insurance company rescinded his coverage once he became ill, an act known as recission. The efforts of his sister and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got Mr. Raddatz’s policy reinstated within three weeks of his April 2005 rescission and secured a life-extending stem-cell transplant for him. Mr. Raddatz died this year, nearly four years after the insurance showdown.

Obama aides say the president got the essence of the story correct. Mr. Raddatz was dropped from his insurance plan weeks before a scheduled stem-cell transplant.

What Obama’s aids say, of course, is incorrect. But did you catch that? Obama’s aides used a second falsehood to bolster the first. Actually, the essence of the story was that an insurance company dropped a man’s coverage due to a misunderstanding, but was able to restore it within several weeks allowing him to continue with his cancer treatment.

Continuing from the article:

The patient’s sister, Peggy M. Raddatz, testified before the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee June 16 that her brother ultimately received treatment that “extended his life approximately three years.” Nowhere in the hearing did she say her brother died because of the delay. Ms. Raddatz didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Obama Addresses Congress On Health Care, September 9, 2009

One of two things is true here: Either Obama knowing lied in trying to present a dramatic representation of why we need a national health care system, or else he didn’t understand the facts completely before he presented them as true.

If the truth is the former (i.e., he is lying), than we cannot trust him because he seems to lie at every turn in order to make his case (remember his promises that we would have 72 hours to review legislation on the Internet, he would have no former lobbyists in the administration, his administration would be transparent, etc.). By itself, this does not make him all that different from many other politicians; but he’s talking about implementing a drastic change that accounts for about 1/6th of our economy.

If it’s the latter (he didn’t have his information straight before presenting it as factual), then we’re in arguably just as bad a position, because we’d have a President who seems determined to establish his legacy in his first year by shoving a health care reform bill down our throats whether we want it or not. Worse, he would do this in spite of the fact that he doesn’t really know how well it will work or what the cost will really be (even though the Congressional Budget Office has warned such a program would bankrupt the country).

In any event, that swollen feeling in your neck is not Swine Flu, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Congress and Obama getting ready to shove their national healthcare program past your vocal chords. And if THAT doesn’t gag you, just wait until we get the bill for this new and improved system.

But perhaps the bigger issue here is that we have a President who the loony tune libs see as “The Second Coming” and yet he seems consistently unable to tell the truth or get his facts straight. I wish it were the latter, based solely on his lack of experience at running anything other than his mouth.

But I fear, dear readers, that it’s the former and that he has lots more surprises in store for us. Stay tuned. I am examining a list of his lies, misdirections, and sleight of hand. It adds up to a chilling prediction as to what lies ahead. Literally.

What will the President do with Afghanistan? To answer that, look at Obama’s past stance on the war, where he’s at now, and given his decision-making proclivities, what he might do in the near future…

Well, what’s the background? I think we all know that one through and through. The “POTUS to be” campaigned on the anti-Bush rhetoric that Iraq was a mistake, and Afghanistan was the real fight. It became his mantra and there are no doubt hundreds of clips and quotes to act as proof.

And where is Barack now relative to the war in Afghanistan? Quite simply, he is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, he’s haunted by all the campaign-speak, and on the other he’s facing a deteriorating battle condition, and a growing outcry from his very own Left to get the Hell out. It certainly hasn’t helped matters that commanding General Stanley McChrystal is looking for as many as another 45,000 troops for that conflict.

Finally, what will the President ultimately do with the Afghanistan War? Obviously, no one (probably not even Obama himself) knows for sure. But here’s my guess based on what we’ve all seen in the past… He will probably find a way to tuck tail and at the same time claim that he is indeed fighting the good fight and will continue to do so. I’m guessing that he’ll take George Will’s advice, and turn to technology, special forces, and intel…

America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

But why will he take this route? Because if Obama is anything, he is shrewd (and by concomitant political necessity, a shrewd wordsmith). Damn the truth, and damn the proper, Obama is just a Chicago politician with an agenda to “fundamentally transform” America… Full blur ahead! He is after all, “Community Organizer in Chief“. Somehow, I don’t think a war 6,500+ miles away rates as the brightest blip on his radar. So, he’ll find the expedient way out of Afghanistan – the crafty public relations way to have his cake and eat it too.

Just as he could explain away Reverend Wright, and morph “create a million jobs” into “create orsave a million jobs“, Obama will find/explain a way to make Afghanistan a political win. He’ll bail. He’ll spin it as cost-cutting and soldier-saving. He’ll claim it’s more humane, more efficient, cheaper, and the next logical step into 21st century warfare. Let technology, intelligence, and elite units perform the miracles… And we’ll buy it. And the whole damned mess will quietly rot on the vine as our economy scoops and finally breaks under inflation and unsustainable debt.

Jeremy Boreing at BigGovernment gave us a tour de force this weekend on why we should stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. He directly addressed President Obama’s speech at the United Nations and in just over a dozen paragraphs, Mr. Boreing managed to demolish a few of the Left’s most cherished notions, e.g., that nuclear weapons are evil, and that a world without nuclear weapons will be a utopia where billions of lives are no longer under threat of annhiliation.

It seems lost on the American President that he was not elected to create or perfect a world order, but to elevate the interests of the United States. He was not selected by a world assembly but by Americans, who extracted from him a sworn oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign or domestic. That same Constitution calls the president the Chief Executive of the Untied States. Imagine if the chief executive of Wal-Mart attended an economic forum and suggested a willingness to make his company less successful in the interest of promoting the perceived success of his competitors. It is unlikely that he would remain CEO for long…

Boreing also tags a zinger in there about socialism:

Utopian dreams rarely have any connection to reality. The socialist ideal of transferring power and wealth from the few to the many is proven a delusion once one realizes that the method socialists use to accomplish this goal is powerful government, thus making the true reality of socialism the transfer of power and wealth from the few to the far fewer. It is the same with this pre-adolescent belief that a world without nuclear weapons would be a better or more peaceful one. In actuality, nuclear weapons have maintained the closest thing the world has ever known to global peace for over sixty years.

And on the absolute necessity for the major powers to retain their nuclear arsenals, he has this to say:

…War is no longer sustainable, but it never-the-less still exists. The reason they are not fought between the large powers, the reason they cannot be, is that the nuclear weapon makes them unwinnable. For that reason, the major powers, America, Britain, France, Russia, and China do well to maintain their weapons. They do no harm, and yet they do great, great good. They have already saved perhaps hundreds of millions of lives, and even if one is one day used surreptitiously by a terrorist organization to kill tens of thousands of people, they still will have been a net gain to society of a thousand times that number of lives saved. Why then would the President of the United States, the country that has, armed with these devices, kept so great a peace for so long, seek to eliminate them?

But before you despair that Obama might actually achieve such a world-changing and potentially disastrous goal, ask yourself this: Isn’t it likely that Obama’s U.N. rhetoric is yet another instance of the President’s seeming inability to close the deal on myriad initiatives he has been pushing (health care, cap and tax, closing Guantanamo Bay, etc.)?

We can only hope so, as the alternative scenario is too grim to imagine.

Muammar Gadaffi’s recent appearance at the U.N. has sparked more rumors that the de facto leader of Libya may be suffering from a rare form of “Jacko” syndrome… named after the late singer Michael Jackson. It’s not actually a disease, but a mental affliction that causes an individual to emulate the King of Pop by altering one’s appearance to mimic Jackson, eventually resulting in a character that looks like an escapee from a carnival side-show.

In the case of Gadaffi, also referred as “Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution,” or simply “Gadaffi Duck,” the change in his appearance was first noticed in the late ’70s as was the case with Jackson. Below is the evidence of the changes in the appearance of both through the years:

Early 1970s

Michael Jackson (L) enjoying the success of his first hit as a solo performer, Ben, a song about a pet rat. A youthful Gadaffi (R) was in his “Pre-Accessorized” phase at this time, although he is sporting his best attempt at an Afro. Ironically, in later years, his appearance would take on a similar look to the rat that was the subject of Jackson’s song.

Late 70s

In the late 70s, disco was king, and both Jackson and Gadaffi were living it, although Jackson had the look down pat. While Jackson was singing Billie Jean, Gadaffi was going more for the John Travolta character in Saturday Night Fever. Unfortunately, Gaddafi lacked the charisma of Tony Manero and came across as more like Tony Manure. While both men were at their peak, neither had the good sense to stay with their look. They both seemed to operate on the philosophy of Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. This would ultimately lead to ridicule for both of them.

The 80sWith the end of Disco, both chose to go in the direction of the decidedly more macho look of the military. While Jackson turned to a Hollywood costume designer for his look, Gadaffi visited the Army/Navy surplus stores of several countries, buying up ribbons and awards along with various uniform components, winding up looking like a military leader without a country.

The 90s
With the military look having run its course, the next step each chose was to make not-so-subtle changes to their face. In Jackson’s case, he had access to the finest plastic surgeons in the world. Sadly, Gadaffi had to settle for a Libyan surgeon whose only experience at plastic surgery was in turning a single-humped camel into a two-humper, as the results clearly showed. He tried to make up for it by going with even more outlandish outfits. Unlike Jackson, however, he didn’t have access to Tinseltown designers, so he had to settle for Omar the Tent-Maker.

2000-PresentThe recent years have been unkind to both. While Jackson kept updating his face more often than Windows Vista, eventually his skull could only take so much and he had to go back to what was essentially the same nose he had as the Scarecrow in The Wiz. And by now, Gadaffi’s plastic surgeon/veterinarian, lacking the sophistication of western doctors, resorted to Bondo and Spackle to maintain Gadaffi’s aging face but to no avail, and today he bears a striking resemblance to… well, remember Jackson’s hit song I referred to earlier? Note: Neither photo above has been altered in appearance other than to fit the available space.

Since Jacko’s death in June, Gadaffi has been a sullen, sad dictator seemingly without inspiration. The depth of his depression, however, was not fully realized until his recent visit to the United Nations last week. After his speech, Gadaffi disappeared from all additional meetings and parties. However, Grand Rants has been able to confirm a sighting up him later in the day in Greenwich Village that illustrates just how far Gadaffi has fallen since Jackson’s passing. Sadly, the below photograph, to the best of my knowledge, has not been altered in any way either.

He was later seen wandering the streets of Soho London asking if anyone had Boy George’s phone number.

During his two-year Presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly promised the American public we would have 72 hours to examine any legislation. Of course, we all know now that this was just one of his many empty “say whatever they wanna hear” lies.

The first (and probably most important) bill that appeared on his desk (yes, we’re talking the $780 billion stimulus package) was signed within an hour or two of it reaching him. We, The People, were left to wonder what we had just committed ourselves to. Many of us still have no idea of the extent of the package.

Enter the $900 billion Health Care Reform legislation that could easily wind up being a financial comittment several times that of the Stimulus package.

As a service to the American public, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) proposed an amendment that would have required the Senate Finance Committee to post the final language of the health care reform bill (along with a Congressional Budget Office cost analysis) on the committee’s website for 72 hours prior to a vote. Since health care represents about one sixth of our economy, it would seem logical for us to want to know the specifics of a plan before we can let our representatives in Congress know how we feel about it.

Surprise, surprise: the proposal was rejected 12-11.

But here’s the straw that should break the voter’s back: In a display of either butt-stupid ignorance or unfathomable arrogance, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) stated thatit would be too difficult to post the bill on the Internet for the public to read. Baucus claimed it would take his staff up to two weeks to put the contents of the bill on-line for the public to read.

Chairman Baucus, you are either the dumbest sack of potatoes to hold public office or else a liar of mammoth proportions. Of course you can post the bill on-line. If you wanted to achieve the “transparency” the President promised us during his campaign, you can easily accomplish this very simple task. And it is simple regardless of whether you post the “plain English” version you vote on, or the version with all the legal phrasing.

Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., himself admitted that “This probably sounds a little crazy to some people that we are voting on something before we have seen legislative language.” Indeed.

Baucus’ excuse – that it would take his committee staff two weeks to post the bill online – sounds a little crazy too…

Chairman Baucus, I run a print shop that also scans documents for use both on the Internet and in interoffice communications. I work with machines that could scan the 1100 page stimulus package bill and give you a PDF file ready to be uploaded to your web site in under 15 minutes! I do this kind of thing frequently.

So my question to you, sir: Are you so out of touch with reality that you can’t figure out how to use technology to serve your constituents and the people of America? If that’s the case, sir, it’s time for you to pack it in and go mend fences.

Otherwise, you are nothing more than a lying tool of the Obama administration, assisting him in his continued effort to keep us in the dark. In either case, sir, I hope you either find a way to reverse that ludicrous decision, or that the good people of Montana vote you out of office at their earliest opportunity, for you have lost all sense of who you are as a public servant. We The People deserve much better representation than this.

In a hilarious display of no doubt unintentional irony, the director and several stars of the new film, “The Age of Stupid“, avoid a reporter’s question on just how they arrived at the premiere. Given that the film posits that the most damaging threat to the human race is air travel, it seems a reasonable question to ask.

Clearly, not only is it not a reasonable question, anyone who asks it becomes persona non grata, as the director demands that the hapless reporter be removed from the press area.

Breaking News:Secret Nuclear Enrichment Facility Uncovered In Iran —
Obama To Take Credit For Work Of Western Intelligence

Pres. Obama Speaking (naturally), French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh

Iran has built (and has been hiding for years) a secret nuclear facility underground, according to charges made this morning by President Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the opening of the G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh.

Iran revealed the existence of a covert uranium enrichment facility to the U.N. nuclear watchdog this week after it discovered the project’s secrecy had been breached by Western intelligence agencies… [emphasis mine]

At some point, one would hope that it would dawn on President Obama that, without an intelligence agency like the CIA, which is able to operate in secrecy, this discovery might never have happened. Had it not happened, Iran might have been able to bring its nuclear weapons development program full-term without our knowledge.

Imagine that, Mr. President, as you continue to eviscerate both our nuclear defense system as well as our intelligence community through prosecution and exposure.

To quote those school kids in New Jersey:
“Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm… Barack Hussein Obama.”